Principal Software Engineer - Maia Model Enablement

Microsoft • ,

7h • $142,800 - $304,200

About The Position

The Maia Model Enablement team owns the end-to-end technical work required to bring frontier AI models onto Microsoft's AI accelerators and make them successful in production. The work spans model enablement, performance optimization, serving capabilities, validation infrastructure, hardware bring-up, and cross-stack debugging.

The Principal Software Engineer defines technical direction and solves complex, end-to-end systems challenges at the intersection of AI models, software, and hardware. The role requires deep technical expertise, systems thinking, and sound technical judgment to identify high-impact investments, align teams around durable solutions, and improve model enablement as an organizational capability.

The team works across the software stack, from model architectures and serving systems to infrastructure and hardware interactions. Problems evolve throughout model and hardware lifecycles, and engineers develop expertise in new domains as needed. The team relies on measurement, experimentation, automation, and AI-assisted engineering workflows, partnering closely with model, software, and hardware teams to deliver production-ready solutions.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field and 6+ years of technical engineering experience coding in languages such as C++ or Python, or equivalent experience.
• Ability to meet Microsoft, customer, and/or government security screening requirements, including passing the Microsoft Cloud Background Check upon hire or transfer and every two years thereafter.

Nice To Haves

• Understanding of modern AI model architectures, inference systems, performance optimization, and serving stacks.
• Experience diagnosing and resolving complex problems spanning models, software, systems, infrastructure, and hardware.
• Experience enabling software on new hardware platforms, accelerators, or large-scale systems through activities such as bring-up, performance characterization, hardware-software debugging, or platform enablement.
• Experience using modern engineering tools, including AI-assisted workflows, automation, and agents, to improve productivity and accelerate technical investigation.
• Demonstrated ability to identify high-impact technical investments, drive them from concept through production, and create durable capabilities that improve engineering work.
• Technical judgment and experience leading cross-team technical initiatives across complex and ambiguous problem spaces.
• Ability to balance immediate delivery needs with long-term platform strategy and architectural direction.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical strategy for enabling new AI models, model architectures, and hardware generations on Maia.
• Lead complex cross-stack investigations across models, serving systems, infrastructure, and hardware, and resolve systemic technical challenges.
• Drive platform-wide improvements in performance, scalability, and serving capabilities that benefit multiple models and future hardware generations.
• Create durable automation, validation, and engineering systems that improve the speed, reliability, and repeatability of model enablement.
• Align model, software, infrastructure, and hardware teams around shared technical direction, execution plans, and long-term platform investments.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal